What happens when Marcus Jernmark goes casual?
Marée is providing the answer through crispy-shelled escargot beignets, house-baked bread turned into miso vinaigrette, and one of the city’s most complex burgers.
In February Sweden-born chef Jernmark debuted Lielle, which quickly became one of the most buzzy fine-dining experiences in the city. This month he opened a Parisian-inspired bistro and wine bar upstairs. He says it’s how he prefers to eat.
It’s “more about trying to find the simplicity in what we do and to make sure that there’s some sort of [familiarity] on the menu,” he said. “I mean, even the Ferran Adriàs or the Jordan Kahns of the world go out for steak frites or a burger on their days off.”
Jernmark formerly worked at fine-dining institutions Aquavit and Per Se in New York and Restaurant Frantzén in Stockholm. Marée is his most casual endeavor to date.
That’s not to say Jermark’s cooking at Marée is simple. He approaches his more casual restaurant with the same eye for detail, but, as he says, without as much refinement.
The burger begs to differ.
Black pepper and other seasonings coat the outer edge of the grass-fed, dry-aged beef patty, which took the chef five to seven attempts to find the right purveyor. It’s both seared and grilled and, in lieu of adding cheese to the patty, brushed with beef tallow that’s been infused with dry-aged-beef trimmings and Roquefort cheese for funk. The fluffy, double-egg-washed-and-buttered brioche bun is baked in-house and slathered with an aioli-based relish, house pickles and duxelles made from barbecued hen-of-the-woods mushrooms mixed with house-made beef garum. Thin, crispy onion rings and fried kale add texture, and it’s all cut in half and served on a layer of four-pepper au poivre, so while the burger dripping in peppery sauce can still be handheld, it “eats like a dish,” according to Jernmark.
Escargots — practically a national emblem of French cuisine — are braised and combined with roasted mushrooms, shallots, garlic and finely trimmed fresh spinach before they’re encased in a thin beignet batter, fried until airy and crisp, sprinkled with vinegar powder, and dipped into a combined house-made snail butter and béchamel.
There are split whole Caledonian blue prawns, wine-cooked and blue-cheese-flecked mussels “gratin,” spirals of fresh veal sausage, mixed-grill platters of meats and vegetables, and silver coupes of thick decadent, hazelnut-topped chocolate mousse.
“We’re kind of working with the same values and we look at it through the same lens, meaning we want to bring quality and accessibility together,” Jernmark said. “It’s approached exactly the same as Lielle. It’s just in a different genre of eating.”
Jernmark rented the top floor of the building at the same time he acquired the bottom and began construction on both simultaneously, but wanted to focus on Lielle first.
He’d initially planned Marée as a more pared-down bar, “kind of the vestibule of the restaurant [Lielle]” and the sort of place to begin or end the evening centered on his tasting-menu restaurant downstairs. Its hours extend earlier and later than Lielle’s, still making this format a possibility, but over the last two years of planning Marée’s scope grew and took on its own personality.
“It had to kind of get its own identity and its own DNA, and could really no longer just be a part of the Lielle experience,” he said. “It had to have its own life.”
He removed some of the partitions from its former tenant, Manzke, and added a bar with counter seats overlooking the kitchen. What was once home to dining tables on Manzke’s second floor is now hidden and used as storage, a bakery, an office, a laundry room and prep space. The dining room, now painted white and decorated with daily specials and desserts written across hanging mirrors, is bright and airy.
The French word for “tide,” Marée is meant to evoke ebb and flow. “A restaurant only has energy because of the people who walk through the door,” Jernmark said. “The guests make the atmosphere, coming and going like the tide.”
Jernmark’s own preferred mode of dining is often wine bars, gravitating toward the seasonal small plates and rotating pours of spaces like Hollywood’s Stir Crazy or Brooklyn’s the Four Horsemen. He loosely modeled Marée around these, but with a more Parisian bent.
Lielle head sommelier Phil South is also leading the wine list upstairs, offering full access to Lielle’s bottle list plus more options by the glass and with a broader geography. At Lielle, the by-the-glass list is entirely Californian; at Marée, find pours from Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, Romania and beyond, with some priced as low as $12. Its chef-founder hopes the more accessible price points, as well as the walk-in-friendly format, will make Marée a neighborhood fixture.
“I really want to create something that feels very timeless,” Jernmark said. “Ambition has nothing to do with what I’m addressing now. It’s more about: Are we going to do something truly unique or are we going to truly be there for our guests and our communities for the next 20 years?”
Marée is open at 9575 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, from 5 to 10 p.m. daily, with kitchen hours of 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
The post What happens when a fine dining chef opens a wine bar? The best new burger in town appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
